This paper is a current draft of my Honours research project, and looks into whether changing economic variables have any predictive power on changing rural land use in recent years. To do this I attempt to answer three questions: 1. Do recent commodity prices have any predictive power on land...

The study examines the importance of community forest resources for income and employment in rural areas of Nepal by studying the effect of current forestry policy on forestland use. Using data from 259 households in six community forest user groups in three hilly districts (Dolakha, Kavre and...

The study examines the importance of community forest resources for income and employment in rural areas of Nepal by studying the effect of current forestry policy on forestland use. Using data from 259 households in six community forest user groups in three hilly districts (Dolakha, Kavre and...

This study examined consumer attitudes towards food attributes and origins, alongside consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for food certified for these attributes in China, India and the UK. The study used surveys including a choice experiment undertaken in each country. The economic impact of...

Three axioms underpin consumer choice in neoclassical theory: weak order, independence, and continuity. Two of these axioms may not hold, however, for consumers’ choices regarding genetically modified (GM) food. Consumers may evaluate product attributes differently depending on whether the...

The adoption of environmental management practices is addressed in this paper. The use of consumer behaviour theory and a market research approach is discussed by describing how it was used in the study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from dairy farmers in four New Zealand...

Nationwide mail surveys implemented in November 2004 report New Zealand residents‟ willingness to pay for improvement in ecosystem services and support for organic farming on arable land. The surveys were split into two subsets: Canterbury, which is the region with most arable farming in the...

In this paper, we studied the importance of indigenous biodiversity (native bush) on farm properties in the Waikato Region. To do this, we surveyed both real estate agents and farmers. We discovered that opinions of native bush between the two groups were very different. A small percentage of...

In an attempt to value soil natural capital, we use the inherent characteristics of soil and land valuation data to examine the relationship between soil characteristics and rural farmland values in the 6000ks2 Manawatu catchment in New Zealand. The study applies a hedonic pricing method to...